When trials come our way, we look for hope. Disciples of Christ don’t have to look far. This daily devotional looks at how God’s love for us is the foundation of hope.
Nuggets
- Our hope is built on the Rock.
- One of the foundations of hope is God’s love for us.
- God gives us direction regarding His Will through the Holy Spirit, which gives us hope.
Devotions in the What Is Hope? series
We have been winding our way around the first part of Romans 5 to learn more about hope. After talking about justification, faith, grace, and peace, Paul talked about trials. Underlying all of this is the hope that we find in God.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Hope is where we desire for something that we believe is obtainable.
Our foundation is built on the blessings of faith, hope, peace, joy, comfort, and glory. It is only through Jesus’ love that we have hope.
If Jesus is not Lord of our lives, we do not have hope. If Jesus didn’t justify us, we wouldn’t have hope.
We show God’s merit when we give Him reverence. When we respond in humility, we show that we agree that He is higher than us. Our trust, love, and hope show how much we believe in His love and provision.
Because we have the hope, we believe in the ultimate triumph of Truth. That will be Jesus’ second coming.
Let's Put It into Context #2
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom. 5: 3-4 NIV)
- In order to have hope, we need to be justified; in order to be justified, we have to have faith.
- We get faith through grace.
- God readily gives us peace and helps us grow into holiness.
- Because of the magnificence of His glory, we have the assurance that God can provide the atonement for our sins.
- Trials are hard to endure, but we have to persevere through them.
- By getting the sin out of our lives, God is growing our character to be more like Him.
- Patience comes only when we give God control of everything.
- We build our character when we follow God’s mind and Will.
Hope’s Foundation Is Rock Solid
“And hope does not put us to shame, …” (Rom. 5: 5 NIV)
What we’ve learned over the past two devotions is that hope is not just handed out like candy. We have to do our parts to secure hope.
We get to the point where we have confidence in our hope. We know our hope is valid because of in Whom we place our trust.
Let’s face it. Life is complex. We hope something will happen, but its happening is contingent on yada, yada, and yada. Yada may just blow up on us.
Isn’t it great to know that our hope is built on the Rock? What we think is attainable is contingent on what is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Heb. 13: 8).
Related Links
Philips, Craig & Dean
We know we can put our hope in God because of what He has promised. We know we can put our hope in Jesus because of what He has done for us.
Clarke said that we sometimes mix up hope and desire. If we look at desire as expressing a wish for something, we may or my not believe it is attainable. What we see as desire in some cases may, in reality be despair.
Also, if the desire slips over to coveting something, we have now sinned. We have to watch the desire so that we are following God’s will.
Don’t read this as we are not supposed to desire something. Clarke reminded us that “hope is made up of desire and faith — it is the confident expectation of coming good.”
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So, we are to hope on God alone. As Spurgeon said, we can have “… absolute certainty that our hope will be realised (sic).”
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Hope’s Foundation is God’s Love
“… because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts …” (Rom. 5: 5 NIV)
How can we have this absolute certainty? One of the foundations of hope is God’s love for us.
It is mind boggling to think God loves us — but He does. We have disobeyed and continue to disobey Him.
Let’s look at it this way. God set up the Plan of Salvation before He created the universe. He loved us before we did anything wrong.
But God also loved us before we did anything right. So, what makes God love us?
God loves us because it is Who He is. God is love (I Jn. 4: 8). It is His character, so it does not depend on anything to be sustained.
God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. It wasn’t because we were so perfect and good. “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 8 CSB).
That is a strong foundation on which to build our hope. It isn’t about what we do or don’t do. It is about our accepting what Jesus has already done for us.
Doesn’t that make the gift more precious? We totally did not deserve it. God gave it to us anyway.
Spurgeon said something that just hit me. He wrote, “That the Lord must ever us now that we are reconciled.”
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Once God gives us the pardon of our sins when we ABCD, His decision to reconcile us to Him is forever made. He can’t pull His love away from us.
But it is based on us being genuine. We have to follow through with the submission after the asking for forgiveness. We have to out Sovereign God on the throne of our hearts.
That makes God’s love unfailing. “But each day the LORD pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life” (Ps. 42: 8 NLT).
Because of this love, we have God’s support. He fights for us. “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Ex. 14: 14 ESV).
God isn’t stingy with this love. Because of it, we are the recipients of God’s grace. Grace is a free and unmerited gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Where is this love revealed? In our hearts. That makes it personal.
What do we keep saying? God wants to change our character. That happens at the heart level.
Brown put it this way. He wrote, “Personal piety has to do not only with the conduct, but the character; and the character is decided by the condition of the heart in the sight of God. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and if the love of God be there holiness will be stamped upon thought, word, and deed.”
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Hope activates us. Because we have confidence in God’s love, we can put our trust in hope. That means we can do what God asks us to do.
We Have Hope through the Holy Spirit
“… through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom. 5: 5 NIV)
God gives us direction regarding His Will through the Holy Spirit, which gives us hope. We can really know and experience God’s love because God promised that the Holy Spirit would dwelling within us.
Yes, the Holy Spirit lives in disciples. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (I Cor. 3: 16 ESV).
Did you really read those words? “… through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom. 5: 5 NIV). He gives us the assurance of God’s love, the foundation of hope.
It isn’t us. It is what has been given to us.
Oh, we like to think it is us. We like to think we can change ourselves and those around us.
But look what Spurgeon said. He wrote, “We can shed that love abroad by preaching, but we cannot shed it abroad in the heart.”
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I know. I keep wanting to change shed to spread. But focus, people.
One of our duties is to witness. “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation’” (Mk. 16: 15 ESV).
We can talk and talk and talk. But we can’t make someone take our words to the heart level.
The Holy Spirit is the one who prompts them.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t witness. It means we have to do our part.
We witness; God saves.
Making the Connections
We said God loves us with an unfailing love. But there are some times that we do not feel this love.
That is not on God. That is on us.
We lose sight of God when we have sin in our lives. That makes us take our eyes off of him and put them on this world.
We have to respond to God’s love. God is not a dictator Who forces Himself on us. The choice is ours.
Well, Hodges blew my mind. He wrote that we don’t see ourselves as the objects of God’s love “… because we [don’t] see in ourselves effects of regeneration and the evidences of holiness; for — (1) This love was prior to regeneration. (2) Holiness is the fruit of the assurance of it.”
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Okay, I have to process that. God loved us before we were regenerated. He can’t love us more (or less) now that we have been. So, we don’t see a change in His love.
What is running through my mind right now is how do we reconcile that with the fact that God has a special place in His heart for His people? Wouldn’t He love us more after we ABCD?
I would say that God has known from before creation that we would be His children. So, He has always loved us as His child.
If we do not ABCD, God still loves us as His creation. That love doesn’t change either.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
Yes, we are hoping on the unseen. Our ability to do that is probably going to be dependent on how much we are seeking God. If we don’t seek Him, we won’t have as much confidence in our relationships with Him and in His promises.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
How Do We Apply This?
Since we are hoping on the unseen, that means we have to open the eyes of our hearts to see it. God uses the insights that He puts in our hearts through our observations so we can utilize that, rather than our own understanding, to determine what He is telling us.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
We’ve got to keep our relationships with God strong so that we can strengthen our ability to hope. We do that by seeking Him.
Nothing can equal the love of God, and it is on this love that we build our hope. God can love us no less than He does. Hope is the product of this love.
Father God. We are humbled by Your great love for us. It is on that unfailing, everlasting love that we build our hope. We know that Your promises are true. Help us to keep a strong faith in You. Amen.
What do you think?
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